Genestealer Cult of the Starman

[Brenlak]

I have been waiting for someone to start a thread about Genestealer Cults and I figured it's been so long I might as well start it myself. No doubt you are probably up to your eyeballs in cultists and have not had a chance to play a game yet, let alone chat about it, but hey I need a paint break so here we go!

I already had Deathwatch Overkill (what a great value this set is, I doubt we will get a Start Collecting set for the cult while Overkill is still around) so on Drop day I picked up 2 boxes of each the Acolytes and Neophytes and the Codex. A quick glance through and I settled on building the Acolyte Hybrids first (minimum 5 man squad and 2 of those can take special weapons?!figured they will be the trickiest of the two to get the hang of..), in fact I even doubled back and got 2 more boxes of them, ready to crank out a mighty 30 Acolyte Hybrids, that was my goal for the month!!

Well I almost have 14 done,lol. These guys are a lot more work to paint than my Tyranids are!

I was going to build the Acolytes based in squads of 10 but there are just to many weapon choices to drool over (drooling uncontrollably happens to be a sign of xenos infection) so I settled on something different.

Out of the 30 Acolytes:
2 are Squad Leaders, one armed with the Lashwhip and Bonesword, the other just a Bonesword
2 have Cult Icons, thinking of swapping one with the Neophytes icon, just to change things up
4 have Demolition Charges, I really like the look of these! I hope they are worth the points for the one use...
2 have each of the Rock Saws, Drills, and Cutter, haven't wrapped my head around them yet.
4 swapped the pistols for Handflamers, hope they help with Overwatch
14 are the regular, run of the mill autopistol and rending claw guys.

I left the heads and arms off for ease of painting, so I started with the Autopistolers from the Deathwatch box as they were all fixed models and like I said I am almost done 14 of them. Pictures as soon as I get them done!

Thats me, how are the rest of your cults fairing?

[Denzark]

I am having a big internal conflict with myself over cults. I want to ally in some Guard for support weapons - specifically Wyverns. Now, I wanted to see if there was a way to use my Lost and Damned cult vehicles. And do you know what - there is a fluff compliant way! The codex mentions the Cult Tenebrous who basically turned to Nurgle worship. Not only does this act as a throwback to the old fluff where a struggling coven may worship chaos for expediency, but that means I can paint one set of vehicles to use in 2 armies. Brilliant.

My problem is as follows:

Can't think of a decent nurgly paint scheme for the stealers.

I want my space hulk stealers to be purple.

I have always wanted purple cult vehicles since the old hex based PC game with Eldar vs. Nids.

I don't think having 2 sections of the Army - one chaos one non-chaos - will look as good.

So, a bit hung up at the mo.

[Brenlak]

My cultists have skin that matches my Tyranid army (Base Celestia Grey and The Fang for the Chitin) as I intended them to be Allies in a larger Tyranid force, but after reading the lists they really feel like an army all of their own (definitely more than any other mini-dex army I have seen, Harlequins I'm looking at you..) so they will start as allies until I have enough painted to go it on my own.

As far as painting I'm going with the Hobgoblin color scheme,finally I can use up all these old purples and pinks I got from a roomates failed Hello Kitty Necron project! Plus I am a big fan of the color Orange (Larfleeze I'm looking at you..)

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Denzark if you are going with purple skin and not some default Nurgle color I would grab the old color wheel and give it a spin. Orange, purple and green are all Triad colors so should compliment each other well, you could always pull a Blanche and dirty them buggers up like they live in the bottom of the hive and bathe in the sump.
As far as two sections of army I think if the color scheme is consistent it shouldn't be a problem. The cult is already made up of multiple sections, ex-miners and ex-military (or 4 "arms" if you think about it, one is the purestrain tyranids, the next the Cultists that can't pass as human, your Acolytes and Abberants, 3rd arm is your "civilian cultists" with your Goliaths and the 4th is the "military cultists" with their tanks and lasguns), to me color is the main thing that ties am army together, that's why the first Brettonians looked like a primary schoolers fingerpainting (Nigel Stilman I'm looking at you...)

I am still working on my cults backstory but the biggest bulb came to me via the airwaves one morning on the way to work:
There's a Starman waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds

Damn now I'm really thinking about green, it might have made a better spot color choice for the lights than yellow, plus green lenses in glasses always make your dudes look like indiscriminate killers (Black Water I'm looking at you...)

Bah, too much looking at people tonight now my eyes hurt! Hope everyone else's Cults are coming along well. It takes them hundreds of years to infliltrate into the heart of a planets population so don't worry if they aren't painted overnight. Hope to hear from you my fellow Patriarchs!

oh and one more thing:
Don't tell your poppop or he'll get us locked up in fright

[Psychosplodge]

My problem is as follows:

Can't think of a decent nurgly paint scheme for the stealers.

I want my space hulk stealers to be purple.

I have always wanted purple cult vehicles since the old hex based PC game with Eldar vs. Nids.

I don't think having 2 sections of the Army - one chaos one non-chaos - will look as good.

So, a bit hung up at the mo.

What about a Leviathan paint scheme with the chaos parts transitioning from purple to green?

[Denzark]

My painting is not good enough...

[Psychosplodge]

I know that pain.

[son_of_volmer]

I just nudge my buddy towards spamming Rock Saws, so he's converted up some hybrids out of Chaos cultists with Ork saws.
If you're interested the Instagram is modernsynthesist

[Melon-neko]

I have been building a cult lately. Played it once so far using some proxies and learned a few things.
1. The first curse is brutal to the point where I'm not sure I want to use it in friendly games (and all my games are friendly)
2. On every roll on the ambush table except 6 the unit has to be deployed more than 6" away, which means you can only ambush in and throw demo charges on a 6. This made me sad but is perhaps reasonable. This also makes flamers not the best choice. I was going scout sentinels with a heavy flamer but it didn't work well.
3. The army is super fragile. Abarrants are resilient and the first curse is resilient, everything else died in droves.

Anyway, I am currently thinking about metamorphs. I am taking a unit of 5 only in my current list. I was originally going to arm them all with claws. However, there is only 1 claw in the box (which is annoying). However I was thinking the lash whips might not be a bad idea. Striking at I7 with rending claws would be good against eldar.

[Brenlak]

Yeah my cult hasn't gotten any love in weeks. That final layer of white on top of the rubber armor is driving me mad! Just a wee bit to much paint and your done it goes everywhere. I really need to step my paint game up!
Thanks for the info Melon, I love love love the demo charges to bad it sounds like I won't be using them up too much. Luckily I don't play against many Eldar, go claw!!
The big question Hybrid Metamorphs got me asking though: Do you think Tyranid Scything Talons will end up using the rules for Metamorph Talons? I think the +1 WS per set would really help those insurmountable odds my Gaunts need to roll against.

[Melon-neko]

Yeah my cult hasn't gotten any love in weeks. That final layer of white on top of the rubber armor is driving me mad! Just a wee bit to much paint and your done it goes everywhere. I really need to step my paint game up!
Thanks for the info Melon, I love love love the demo charges to bad it sounds like I won't be using them up too much. Luckily I don't play against many Eldar, go claw!!
The big question Hybrid Metamorphs got me asking though: Do you think Tyranid Scything Talons will end up using the rules for Metamorph Talons? I think the +1 WS per set would really help those insurmountable odds my Gaunts need to roll against.

I have no started to paint anything -_-

I doubt gaunts will be getting the +1 ws. Gaunts aren't really meant to kill things anyway though, they are tarpits mostly.

So I played two more games today (sort of)

I started a game againts necrons. I am using the Subterranean Uprising, First curse, neophyte cavalcade, banner bearer, patriarch, magus.

I got initiative and infiltrated everything but the leman russ, which deploys and the two neophytes in chimera, which outflank. most of my ambush rolls were 3-5, which got them on the board in cover. My aberrant's (with banner bearer) rolled a 6 and my 15 man hybrid unit lead by the Primus got a 6. I set up 3 inches from the the necrom line hoping to charge in and take out 3 or so units. Then my opponent stole the initiative and my entire army was wiped out by turn except the remnants of the first curse. =D I didn't bother to bring the chimera on. I could have killed a few more units with the first curse since they had invisibility, but there is no way i could control objectives.

So, we reset the board exactly as we had it and played as if initiative had not been stolen. I managed to wipe out the necron army by the end of turn 4. I had invisibility to protect my genestealers and summoned 2 units with Telepathic summons and it was still rough. If a unit of immortals targets a hybrid unit in the open, they are gone. If using the first curse, it is important to multi charge. If you have enough resilience to survive the overwatch and if you charge 2 units you might manage to stay in combat on your opponents turn.

In neither game did I throw a demo charge -_-